


Insomniac

by nightfever (drfeels)



Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Gen, Gore, Insomnia, Nightmares, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 03:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11199660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drfeels/pseuds/nightfever
Summary: Ever since they've returned from Hades' realm, Shun has been having nightmares that keep him from sleeping. He visits Shiryu's room, hoping sleeping next to a friend will help calm his fears, but finds out he's not the only insomniac in the house.*I tagged this for 'major violence' but it's mostly surrealist violence for Shun's nightmares, which are maybe a bit disturbing but not any more gore-y or vivid than the show itself.





	Insomniac

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged this for 'major violence' but it's mostly surrealist violence for Shun's nightmares, which are maybe a bit disturbing but not any more gore-y or vivid than the show itself. However, if you are uncomfortable with things like decapitation, dismemberment etc. I'd advise against reading.
> 
> That aside, I couldn't sleep and I'd been talking about this with a friend, how frightening the Underworld and being possessed by Hades may have been for Shun in spite of his choice, so I wanted to write a small something about it for catharsis.

A burning like that time when he’d stupidly, at age five, touched the stove without knowing it was hot. The coil had been cooling, gone from the searing red-hot color back to sooty black, and he’d thought, naively, that it was just like ripe fruit, if it was the right color, then everything was in its place, and everything would be ok. In between that memory and the next is a blur of nothing, just a raw memory of searing pain and the suffocating feeling of fear, but there is no picture to go with it, it just plays on, like audio after the end credits of a movie, just noise on a blank screen. 

Ikki yelling, yelling for someone, and the only one that comes is Tatsumi, who chides “You dumb brat!” and lifts him up to the sink and he presses his stomach too tight against the cold porcelain rim, so tight he can barely breathe but all his brain can do is seek the water, the cold water coming out of the faucet.

Tatsumi sets him back on the floor with wet hands. “Watch him,” he says, to Ikki.

Ikki who is there and who is saying “Shun don’t cry, don’t cry,” just glares. He digs into the freezer and scrapes some chips of ice off the sides of one of the drawers, lays them on Shun’s palm, a palm that won’t stop burning, burning bright red. Unlike the stove, it is not losing its color. Ikki holds him tightly, rubs his shoulder.

“Shun, Shun you can’t cry, okay? It’s just a burn. You can’t cry,” he keeps saying that, over and over, and it’s only now as he looks back on the memory he sees Ikki checking the door warily, as though Tatsumi might come back with a whipping rod. “You can’t cry,” he says again as his palm gently rubs Shun’s back. “Don’t cry now, Shun.”

_Don’t cry._

It’s ripping him to pieces. This isn’t like being encircled by his own chain by Shaka, squeezing, the feel of his flesh ripping from the friction, or of the smooth and sharp, fine cuts of Mime’s harp strings. This is burning. Burning to death. It’s melting into him, through his skin, hot. Hot hot hot. His left arm is coming off, it’s coming off, it severs and falls to the floor with a wet sound and the thighs, both of them, and he’s falling, falling and then his head.

His head is falling on it’s own and he sees Seiya there, Seiya yelling at the pile of flesh that used to be him and he remembers how the head is supposed to temporarily retain five seconds of consciousness before it dies and maybe that’s true, that’s true he’s got to yell, to yell to Seiya, tell Seiya to watch out, the whip is coming for him too, it’s coming, it’s coming—!

_Ikki, just kill me, please, it’s alright, just kill me—!_

The burning isn’t the whip anymore.

It’s the wings of a phoenix.

He wakes covered in sweat, three blankets piled on him for protection, not comfort. The window is cracked half-open even though it’s already October. The clock reads exactly 23:23, which means he’s only gone to bed about an hour ago.

That’s farther than he made it last night.

Maybe Shiryu will let him sleep on his floor.

Somehow, no matter how much he tells himself it was just a dream, his heart won’t calm.

He drags the lightest of the three comforters off the bed and takes it with him, pillow under his arm.

When he arrives, Shiryu is sitting on a makeshift bed on his own floor, book in hand, lit by the soft glow of his single table lamp.

“Shun,” he says, looking up and sticking a book marker between the pages before closing it up, “sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

“Tell me what?”

Shiryu nods to his bed.

Ikki appears to be an uncharacteristic mess. His brows are furrowed, forehead wrinkling, sweat beading down it. Shiryu grabs a wet cloth from the bedside table and wipes it off. Ikki is murmuring nonsense words.

He is over at the side of the bed in an instant, about to touch, but Shiryu grabs his wrist. “Sorry,” he says. “I know he’s your brother but…he just got to sleep.”

“He came to you.”

It’s not a question, just a conclusion.

“He doesn’t like to worry you, after all.”

“Is he sick?”

“More tired than anything. He said he hadn’t slept well in days.”

Shun manages a half-smile. “I haven’t either.”

“Is my room about to become insomniac therapy?” Shiryu says dryly, but there’s a warmth behind it. He pats the floor next to him, and Shun flaps his sheet and settles it down next to Shiryu’s. “Want a book?” He gestures to a stack that’s sitting next to the bedside table.

He grabs the nearest one that looks appealing, though they’re all generally the same subject, martial arts techniques. If any of them had ever been sent to school, Shiryu might have ended up a good student, the way he’s studying diligently like this for Sainthood. He opens it and realises it’s written in Han Chinese. His brain cannot bother with words anyways, he realizes when he picks up a different one in Japanese and re-reads the same sentence so many times it takes him five minutes to get to the third line on the page. His brain swims and his lids grow heavy, oh so heavy, until finally it’s like he’s looking at the pictures on the page through a hole in the wall, with darkness fuzzing the edges.

“Don’t cry, Shun.”

He opens the refrigerator. Ikki’s head is sitting there, on a platter like a roast, but the eyes are shining and lucid. He’s still alive.

“Don’t cry, Shun,” he says.

He ignores Ikki and begins to look for the container of leftover curry that’s in here, somewhere, he knows it is, but ah, his arm has begun to come undone again. It severs and falls off and lands on the lowest shelf of the fridge, next to the meat.

“What are you doing to Our body,” a voice says, and he realises it’s his own voice, coming across his tongue and out his mouth, and when he looks at Ikki sitting on the second shelf Ikki doesn’t know him anymore, doesn’t know him, looks at him with horror and confusion and the light fades from those clear, shining eyes.

He catches sight of himself in a silver mixing bowl on the counter.

His hair is red.

He begins to shake.

He is shaking, his eyes open to bland white Kido mansion ceiling and he is shaking, because Shiryu is shaking him awake.

“Shun,” he’s saying, trying to keep his voice low. Ikki must still be sleeping. “Shun, Shun wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”

“The time?”

The question catches Shiryu off guard. He looks at the clock on the bedroom table. 00:07.

“Just past midnight.”

“Did I sleep at all?”

“Barely.” Shiryu is still looking at him like any second he’s going to spontaneously combust. “Are you alright?”

“I’m,” he sighs and flops back down on his pillow. “I’m fine. Tired. Too many bad dreams.”

A brief silence hangs between them, as though neither of them can decide if they should drag the conversation down the inevitable path in front of them or not. It may not be a conversation for the middle of the night, but it’s not one for the daytime either. It’s interrupted by the sound of the screen door slamming, the back one in the kitchen.

“Ah.” Shiryu is off his feet in an instant. “Stay here,” he says. “In case Ikki wakes up.”

The house is dead quiet aside from Ikki’s restless shifting, and the voices from the kitchen drift upward, Shiryu’s low and serious lilt, and someone else equally low and strong, and ah. Ah, even if he can’t make out the words, he knows that voice.

He’s not supposed to be back until tomorrow.

He gets up to go to the door, to peek around the corner, but it’s already too late. Warm chest, warm hands. He smells like he always does as he’s pressing his face into the side of Shun’s neck, into his hair, planting a soft, hidden kiss on his temple, one designed to look like it’s part of a strong hug, face hidden behind the curve of his shoulder.

Hyoga removes his jacket and untangles himself from Shun’s arms.

“Caught an earlier flight,” he says before Shun can even open his mouth to ask the question. Then his lips thin into a slight frown and he plants a kiss at the crown of Shun’s head. “Shiryu said you can’t sleep.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s—“ Hyoga says, softly, but he’s interrupted by a soft, weary voice from the bed.

“Shun.” Ikki rolls over. His eyelids flutter, and only barely open. 

He pushes Hyoga gently away so they’re standing further apart. His heart crawls up the base of his throat. He looks at the other two, desperate.

Shiryu, standing closes to the bed, shakes his head. “Talking in his sleep.”

Both he and Hyoga release their held breaths at the same time, and Hyoga takes the opportunity to weave their fingers together.

It is not that Ikki does not know. Nobody quite “knows”, in that respect, because they have never found the time to have a formal announcement or talk or anything of the sort. Eventually, “Shun” and “Hyoga”, as they had been, became “Shun and Hyoga” to the point where it flowed naturally from everyone, and the fact became accepted as everyday life. Jabu had teased him about it more than once, but never without at least a small trace of affection buried deep within it, and Seiya one day had just placed a hand on his shoulder, looked him very deep in the eye and said, with a smile, “I’m glad you’re happy.”

Ikki has not said anything yet, no words of congratulations or acceptance, but he has also not voiced any disapproval. From Ikki, that is already maybe the most blessing they will get. He has tried not to hope. The Ikki now, the Ikki who still loves him so dearly, is still not the same as he had been. There is no going back, and there’s a small funeral there in his heart he’s still carrying out the wake of. Ikki is still gentle. Ikki is still kind. 

But Ikki is also deeply, irreversibly, hurt.

He drops Hyoga’s hand and moves to the bedside, where Ikki is shaking in his sleep.

“Shun,” he is still saying. “Shun, I’m sorry.”

He wonders if maybe they’re having the same bad dreams, the ones where Ikki’s fist doesn’t stop. It hasn’t come yet tonight, but it’s come three nights this past week. Every time he wakes, shaking, remembering what almost was, remembering how close he’d come to well-intentioned but fruitless death. 

And, in the deepest, saddest part of himself, remembering how close he’d come to giving Ikki one more deep and irreversible wound to carry within his heart.

He gently strokes the sweat-slick bangs from Ikki’s forehead and the trembling stops, if only for a moment.

Hyoga stretches. “Are we going to my room?”

Shun looks down at his blankets on the floor, next to Shiryu’s, then to Ikki on the bed. “Can we stay?”

“D’ya mind?”

“Not at all.” Shiryu opens one of the closets and takes down a pile of spare linens. Hyoga disrobes without any fanfare, throws on one of Shiryu’s spare t-shirts that smells like cedar shelves and laundry soap and makes his spot on the floor next to Shun, close enough so they’re together, far enough to feign separate spots.

Hyoga smells like the inside of Shiryu’s closet and pine tar soap and Siberia.

He’s warm, everything is warm. Hyoga curls an arm around him and brings him into a long sleep. He’s missed having a second body in his bed.

To their left, Shiryu reaches up and turns off the lamp, his gaze lingering on Ikki, sleeping soundly, before everything goes dark.

“It’s for you.”

Ikki is handing him the arm that came undone and a pre-threaded needle. The thread is bright yellow, like the color of crayon he’d use as a child to draw the sun. It doesn’t hurt, sewing it up. Ikki tugs the stitches to make sure they’ll stay.

“I’m proud of you, Shun.”

Hyoga is wrapping his arm in the world’s largest Doraemon band-aid. He kisses it. Ikki is watching.

He looks up, terrified. He can’t read Ikki’s face, it’s just a blur, and the panic grips him. 

Ikki’s voice is warm. “I’m proud of you, Shun.”

Hyoga kisses his wounds again. The whip’s burn-lines across his knuckles disappear. Then his wrists. His elbows. Hyoga kisses the one across his neck, where his head had come apart from his body, and it seals itself up. Then his ear. His eyelids. His lips. It tickles.

The fear that constricts his heart will not loosen.

But Ikki. Ikki. Ikki’s face is still blurry.

“Shun.”

He wakes. The room is dark. The glint of the moon between the curtains reflects on the glass of the clock and all he can read is the minute hand, which says it’s twenty-six minutes past something. Hyoga’s arm is still wrapped around him, burning hot and sweating under all the blankets, and Shiryu is passed out on his other side, hair swirled around him like some sort of shadowy vortex on the floor.

Ikki is sitting up on the bed.

“Shun,” he whispers again. 

He sits up, and Ikki’s figure visibly relaxes.

“You were calling out in your sleep.”

“Ah,” he says softly. “What did I say?”

“My name.”

He rises, untangles himself from Hyoga’s steel grip, regretful with how warm and comforting it feels. The cool breeze from the part-open window makes all the sweat on his body frost over and he shivers. The room is too small and too hot for this many bodies, but outside is too cold. The mattress creaks as he settles next to Ikki on the bed, and for a moment they sit quietly.

“Hyoga’s back.” Ikki says, in a flat tone that makes it hard to read what he means by it.

“He said he caught an early flight.”

Ikki bites his lip. “Shiryu said he wasn’t gonna tell.”

He is confused for a second, what Shiryu knew about Hyoga’s flights back, but then his still-waking brain fits everything together.

“He didn’t.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I also can’t sleep,” he says, and it drops like a stone. “I have nightmares. About…things. That happened.”

Ikki seems to have the same mutual understanding he’d had earlier about the nature of his nightmares, because he doesn’t ask Shun to elaborate. His shoulders stiffen and he bites his lip again, but he seems to understand.

“I’m sorry,” he says, finally, though that does not seem to even encompass the range and depth of what he wants to say. He doesn’t know what else to say, or how. Just that.

And that is something they must have in common, because Ikki doesn’t say anything at all, he just nods, then grabs Shun tightly, holds him to his chest. He’s shaking, he’s trying to breath shallowly to hide it but he’s shaking and Shun feels one of the tears drop down onto his neck.

He strokes Ikki’s back gently and holds him tightly back, just like this, just like this they don’t need any more words.

Ikki dries his face on his t-shirt. 

“Go back to sleep.”

“You first.”

“I will.” He stokes Shun’s hair gently. His voice is warm, just like in the dream. “It’s good Hyoga’s back so soon.”

“Why?”

Ikki brushes a hand through his hair. Just like in the dream, his face is hidden in the dark. All Shun can read are the gently glinting eyes that don’t waver as Ikki says, “It’s probably better for your nightmares if you can sleep next to the guy you love, isn’t it?”

And then, suddenly, he’s the one wiping his tears on his shirt, tears that overflow and stick his hair to his cheeks, tears that will leave white salt trails on his face come morning. Ikki’s hugging him again, even tighter this time. Ikki strokes his hair, gently, as his whole body rocks and weeps and he wants to laugh, he can’t stop himself from laughing into Ikki’s shirt as Ikki holds him, softly saying, “Don’t cry, Shun.”


End file.
